


a plague I call a heartbeat

by Vernal



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/F, Smut, Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 17:45:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13792860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vernal/pseuds/Vernal
Summary: Lorraine and Delphine, during Berlin and after.





	a plague I call a heartbeat

#—

They are lying on a beach in France as the tide comes in. Shells are heaped on the sand where the waves have left them, and not far into the water the ground drops away like a cliff. The sun is high and bright.

They are not even aware enough to be happy. Both asleep, dozing in black bathing suits and sunglasses on towels a foot apart. Their arms are outstretched, fingers grazing at the tips. An American couple glances at them as they go along the beach and then continues on their way.

Lorraine wakes first. Not even a change in her breathing gives it away. She opens her eyes to the sun and a single gull that hangs on the breeze, crying. She reaches out further and covers Delphine's hand with her own. Then she settles further into the towel and falls back asleep.

  
#1

Sometimes she wonders if she's a spy for the sheer fucking theatre of it; five minutes out of the airport and she's killed one man and nearly killed one more in an outfit that costs two months' salary. Never mind that she's already been made and might have been before she touched down, her adrenaline is high and her outfit is intact and even the way she says _fuck's sake_  when Percival dumps her luggage to the asphalt is all part of the act.

She likes Berlin better this way, she decides. She's been before, but there's something about the energy now that makes her feel awake in a way she hasn't in years. Present. She can feel every muscle in her body as she walks around the hotel room, every patch of fabric against her skin. The whole city is awake alongside her, seething.

When she does fall asleep, she does it to the music coming in through the window. A song in German, the beat heavy and erratic, faint enough that she can't quite catch the words.

  
#—

They are wrapped up in each other in a house on Long Island, not far from where Lorraine was born. It is well past midnight and the Perseids streak by outside but neither of them notices.

They have been naked for hours but now Lorraine is greedy. She has Delphine's nipple in her mouth and a hand under her back and two fingers inside her to the knuckles and Delphine is gasping _s'il te plaît ne me fais pas crier_ until Lorraine curls her fingers up sharply and Delphine lets out a moan that Lorraine can feel in her chest.

Delphine falls back to the sheets and Lorraine falls with her. Delphine looks at her sideways and smiles, just enough that her teeth show from behind her lips.

Every time you do that I want to make love to you again.

Lorraine turns to rest on her elbows. Well I'm right here, she says, and Delphine rises up and pushes her over onto her back.

  
#2

Berlin in 1989 is hell and wonder and broken bones, bullet holes in the walls and the bone-deep knowledge that someone is always watching her. She still hasn't figured out how they made her so early, or how they're keeping track of her now, but she trusts that she'll find out. She almost always does.

Gasciogne's apartment is nothing like he would have kept it, and that makes it easier. She finds the information she needs and knocks out the Stasi who come for her—improvising with an electrical cord and tearing muscles in her arms on her swing out the window—and then puts herself together enough to meet Bremovych at the bar. He takes the bait just fast enough that she doesn't protest when the French agent finds her.

She's young, is her first thought; twenty-five, twenty-six, not far out of the French equivalent of CIAU. Maybe only a couple years. Enough time to go on assignment twice and think she knows everything, or at least to think she knows enough.

The woman—the girl—makes an excuse that Bremovych doesn't buy in the least, but he leaves her to it, and then they are alone.

Sorry. You looked like you needed saving, she says, and Lorraine smiles as much in disbelief as in amusement.

Well I appreciate the gesture, miss...?

Lasalle. Delphine Lasalle. Pleased to meet you.

So what do you do, Delphine?

I'm a part-time translator, who really wants to be a poet! Maybe a rockstar.

A pause long enough for Lorraine to show a smile that is almost a laugh. She looks back to her drink, but not far enough that she can't see Delphine look ever so slightly put out.

My friend owns a club, Delphine says next. Nearby. Want to come check it out?

Now? Lorraine says. Thinking: she plays a rookie well.

Sure!

I can't.

Well, I give you the address anyway. And meet me there tomorrow night?

Lorraine doesn't answer. Delphine pulls out a pen and scrawls the address on a paper coaster. When she finishes she looks up.

Will you come? she says. Maybe?

In daylight Delphine would look almost elfin, but in the red light of the bar she looks more like an imp, smiling just enough to show her top teeth, her eyes bright with honest expectation, imploring. You're relentless, Lorraine thinks. And then she says it: You're relentless. Trying her best to hide a wider smile of her own, clamping down on her instinct to mirror what is shown to her.

Oui, Delphine says.

Commotion outside, shouts and flashbulbs. David Hasselhoff's in town, Delphine says, looking disappointed that she has to change the subject.

Lucky us.

Delphine flicks her hair back. Berlin is truly doomed.

  
#—

Delphine proposes at the bar where they met in what is now just Germany, in an early evening crowd that looks on tamely but does not applaud. Lorraine is surprised enough that she actually stutters when she answers.

But we can't.

Then let's pretend. We'll go around wearing rings and say we are.

I never thought I'd marry anyone.

Then don't marry anyone. Marry me!

And Lorraine says yes, after that, and leans down to kiss her, and Delphine puts not one ring on her finger but two, and another two on her own. You may now kiss the bride, she says, with the same faint tone of teasing she's never lost these many years, and Lorraine kisses her again.

  
#3

Lorraine fucks like she fights: explosively, no holds barred, screaming and thrashing and sweating until the end. Delphine fucks like she spies: exploring delicately and at a distance until she finds what she wants and takes it.

The first time they fuck, after the club and Lorraine's brief, blunt performance of _I'm in charge here_ , she holds herself back and gives Delphine what she wants: lingering kisses, patience, and just enough passion to keep her interested. Reveling not in the sex but in the playing of the role of veteran-in-love-with-the-rookie. She enjoys the sex as well, though when she comes she's faking—convincingly, with a deep, throaty moan that takes Delphine by surprise. When Delphine eases out from between Lorraine's legs she looks more thoughtful than satisfied.

You sound like an animal when you come, she says.

And you sound like a schoolgirl.

Delphine smiles. Do you like it?

 -

The second time they fuck is different. The day has been long and fruitless, the days before no less so. Kurtzfeld on her ass and Percival giving out a tenth of what he knows. Hiding something. Or several somethings.

She catches Delphine after she's just gotten home, and after stepping in kicks the door shut with a heel. Delphine protests but Lorraine clamps a hand over her mouth and pushes her against the door harder than she means to, hard enough that Delphine's head knocks loudly against the wood. While she's still disoriented, Lorraine locks the door.

What's going on? Delphine says, under her hand.

In response Lorraine reaches down and undoes Delphine's belt, the snap of her pants, her zipper, and reaches down past the hem of her panties and the small fine hairs that follow until Delphine leans her head back against the door and closes her eyes. Her mouth is slightly open but she does not say anything.

Lorraine holds her up with a hand at her back until she comes, shuddering and weak, gasping instead of moaning. She doesn't realize Delphine's hand is on her arm until it goes slack, and then the rest of her goes slack as well, and Lorraine's arms are the only thing holding her up.

She carries her to the bed. Delphine is still dazed, the edge of a smile on her lips, still dressed in coat and eveningwear. I didn't know if you would come back, she says.

Lorraine strips her fishnets off, strips her panties off, and climbs onto the bed with the rest of her clothes still on. Delphine looks up at her, and her eyes are shining.

Are you going to let me taste you again? she says.

Lorraine takes her by the hair and half-coaxes, half-drags her up, and just as fast there is the heat of her breath and the warmth of her tongue and she lets out a long, slow breath through her teeth and settles in.

Delphine's hands come up to grip her sides and pull her down and the pleasure is enough to make her forget about Percival and the List and the whole fucking mess that is Berlin and just focus on the feeling of Delphine's tongue, her fingers, the small pleased noises she makes when Lorraine moves in response to what she does.

And then she comes. Something about the way Delphine is touching her side and the way it connects with the tongue inside her makes her tense and shudder and cough out a gasp, suck in a breath, shudder, gasp again. She bends over so far she feels like her shoulderblades are about to rip the dress off her back.

She rolls onto her back after, and Delphine allows her a moment to recover before she speaks.

You sound different when you're not faking.

Lorraine is still wearing her coat, and she reaches into one pocket for cigarettes and another for her lighter. What do I sound like? she says.

Like you haven't come in years. Like you're surprised! I didn't think I'd ever get to surprise you. Lucky me.

 -

Lorraine smokes after, lying propped up on the bed's too many pillows with the ridiculous neon spilling across the sheets. Delphine dressed in nothing but a blanket and her thin choker necklace tight around her throat. Hand on her chest. Head on her shoulder. Lorraine's hand is in Delphine's hair and for a moment she forgets it's pretend, loses herself in the texture of that tangle of strands, staring at the ember at the end of her cigarette.

Percival's trying to set me up, she says, at the same time that she realizes it.

Delphine moves her hand slightly and raises herself up onto the pillow. Are you surprised? she says.

Not really, Lorraine says. Trying too hard at the British accent, still absorbed in the texture of Delphine's hair, the warmth of her cheek. The play of neon in her eyes. These relationships aren't real, she says, they're just a means to an end.

A whole range of emotions play out in a series of twitches on Delphine's lips. Her eyes are so wide. When you tell the truth you look different, she says, smiling, almost seeming about to cry. Your eyes change.

Thanks for the warning.

What do you mean?

I mean I better not do it again.

Why?

Abruptly Lorraine comes back to herself. Remembers the role, the mission, the original intent behind getting involved with Delphine at all. She's better than I thought, she thinks, letting the rest of her emotions bleed from her face, pulls on the neutral mask.

Because it's going to get me killed one day.

  
#4

When she was five she wanted to be an actress, and when she was six she decided to be a spy. Actresses played a role for no time at all, but spies could play a role for years.

She never tells her parents, studies acting as a cover. Plays the role of dutiful daughter in counterpoint to her brother, the eldest, the brat, the bully. Eventually she gets good enough at framing him for things she's done that he stops bothering her, and she's able to find enough peace at home to read. About languages, about martial arts, about other spies.

She studies acting all the way through college, and after college, she joins the CIA.

  
#5

When did you decide to become a spy? Delphine asks, later in the night, after more sex and more cigarettes.

I was eight, Lorraine says. My brother stole one of my stuffed animals.

What was it?

I don't remember any more.

Lying.

Lorraine smiles. It was a rabbit, she says. My grandmother gave it to me when I was born.

And you stole it back?

No. My parents had a cassette recorder, and I stole it and hid it under a pillow in my room. I got my brother to admit he'd stolen it, and then showed them the tape.

The smallest spy.

She takes a drag on her cigarette and passes it back to Lorraine. Lorraine takes a drag herself, staring at the rain tracking down one of the tall windows. What about you? she asks.

My story's even sillier than yours.

Tell me.

I was twenty-two. Thinking about being a poet, wondering what I should write about. I had done some writing, I studied at the Sorbonne, but they don't teach you much about what to do after. So I became a spy to do something worth writing about. I didn't think I'd be good at it, but they said I was a natural. And then I came here.

You're joking.

Nope!

And then they sent you here.

I think I'm doing pretty well.

Lorraine takes another drag on the cigarette, long enough that she can feel her chest expand, feel the smoke swirl in her lungs. When she breathes out the cloud is huge and the cigarette is burnt down to the filter. She turns to toss it into the ashtray and when she turns back Delphine is watching her.

  
#—

They get an apartment first in New York City, and then, when both of them lose their taste for the cold, in Los Angeles. Delphine works as an editor, spends nights as a singer in a band; Lorraine works as a bodyguard. She picks up enough gossip from her clients to fill two seasons' worth of tabloids, but she keeps her mouth shut, does the work, comes home at the end of the day.

It is an odd life, after the lives they have lived. Happy but purposeless in comparison, a long crash after the high of their former careers. But they have each other to hold on to, and they carry each other through.

They talk about children but decide against it and adopt a stray dog instead, a German Shepherd mix that reminds them each of the dogs along the Wall. Between Lorraine's harshness and Delphine's permissiveness he grows into a happy, half-wild creature that tears the apartment to shreds and who they each love to death. When he dies a decade and a half later they are each heartbroken.

By then they have different careers. Delphine is a translator of poetry in addition to a poet; Lorraine is a self defense instructor who works exclusively with women, teaching the kinds of details only those who have seen combat can know.

In the same year, it becomes legal for them to marry, and they do so in the summer, alongside others who have waited far longer. A photographer tries to take their picture, but Lorraine pushes him away.

  
#6

Spyglass's extraction goes worse than the worst scenario she planned for, worse with every blow, every bullet. The best she can say afterward is that she made it out alive, but barely even that.

When Delphine comes to her room Lorraine lets her in without a second look, amazed at her brazenness.

Why are you here? Lorraine says. And then, without waiting for her answer: You need to leave Berlin.

When I didn't hear from you I got worried.

How naïve can you be? Lorraine says, and means it. Fuck pretense, fuck acting, fuck Delphine for thinking that she hasn't seen through the rookie act from the first. We chose this life, Delphine, she says. This only ends one way.

What are you talking about?

He set us both up. You have to leave while you can.

She walks out of the room and the door latches behind her.

  
#—

Do you ever think of Berlin? Delphine says, lying half-dressed in bed.

All the time, Lorraine says.

What do you think about?

  
#—

Lorraine is sitting with her back to the wall, washed in red neon, bruises fresh and aching and blood still wet. Delphine is still coughing in the bathroom, ice on her throat, trying to choke down water. Percival is on the floor with two bullet holes in his chest and one in his head. His blood has pooled wide enough that it nearly reaches her feet.

There is powdersmoke in the air and her ears are still ringing from the gunshots and despite the fact that she has at least four broken bones—a rib, two knuckles, something in her foot—all she can feel is the way her breaths come shallow from the adrenaline and the fear.

She wants to rise and check on Delphine but her legs won't work. She can barely feel them. Percival's blood is still spreading, past the toes of her boots, down to midsole, past her heel. She can hear it dripping through the gap in the parquetry.

  
#—

I think about how close it was, Lorraine says.

So do I.

They both smoke in silence. Lorraine has had lung cancer once already, caught early and beaten back, but some nights she can't help herself. Delphine has given up trying to stop her.

  
#7

Lorraine hangs on the door buzzer of Delphine's apartment for a solid minute before someone comes out, and she ducks in after them.

  
#—

What would you have done if you hadn't gotten there in time? Delphine asks.

  
#8

In between pounding on Delphine's door she can hear footsteps. Eventually she kicks the door down.

There's a body on the floor that she notes as she sweeps the apartment. Left clear. Right clear. A dance she's danced before, eyes covering every hiding spot, gun up and out, finger perched on the front of the triggerguard. She looks back to see if the body on the floor is still alive, notes that it's Delphine, looks back forward. Sweeps one window, then the next. Clear.

She looks back to where Delphine is lying on the floor, lowers the gun.

  
#—

I don't think I'd have lived very long, Lorraine says.

  
#9

She can't remember the last time she's cried, and even now it's less crying and more that two tears slip past her defenses. She settles down with her back against the wall, the gun across her knees, holding herself still as if to outwit the pain. She can feel a cry jump up into her throat, forces it down.

She sits there against the wall for a long time.

  
#—

Well I'm glad you made it.

  
#10

She realizes on her way to kill Percival that she made the opposite of the mistake she always thought she'd make. That she'd read intent into what was no more than honesty. Delphine was a good spy because she was exactly what she seemed. Babe in the woods. Rookie in the field.

  
#—

So am I.

  
#11

Killing Percival is the kind of finale that she's sought in her profession from the beginning. Banter to the end, punctuation courtesy of a bullet to the head. The slight swish of her jacket as she walks away in the silence after the gunshot, the expression she holds just so, an accumulation of every action movie she's ever watched, every cheap thriller she's ever read.

Afterward she walks into the first bar she finds and orders a double of Stoli on the rocks and downs it and then orders another. And then another. By the time she leaves she's one shot shy of blackout drunk and she stumbles through the ragged light of roadflares and fireworks to a music of hammers. Tens of thousands in the streets, nowhere empty. A good night to be alive and stay living. Keep walking. Don't think. Don't remember.

By morning she's thrown her gun into a trash bin and lost her coat and the heel of her boot is creaking where it's affixed to the outsole. Her head is pounding and her throat is dry. But she is alive.

  
#—

And I thought you were the one that needed saving, Delphine says.

  
#12

After Berlin the debriefing is an afterthought, Paris almost an anticlimax. Scripted so strictly it's almost boring, clean down to the handful of ice cubes she grabs from the same bucket where her gun was hidden.

She meets Kurtzfeld at the airport, walks through the rolling hangar doors as if answering a curtain call. Around the plane a dozen floodlights are arranged in a semicircle, and she walks the distance to the ramp to no other noise than the click of her heels. The light is so goddamn bright it's blinding, but it's still beautiful.

  
#—

But I was, Lorraine answers, and puts aside her cigarette for long enough to kiss her.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Cat People (Putting Out Fire)', by David Bowie.
> 
> Comments always appreciated.


End file.
